Friday, April 19, 2013

There are many examples of how we, as a society, waste significant amounts of the natural resources that we extract from the Earth. Food is a particularly salient example—both because it is something that we consume regularly (too regular in many cases! J) and can relate to, but also because the transgressions are so blatant. I have seen a number of reports on the amounts of food that are discarded every day, but I do not remember seeing numbers as high as in the article in the url below:

“As much as half of the food produced worldwide ends up being thrown away every year because shoppers are too choosy about the appearance of fruit and vegetables, a report said Thursday. The world produces about four billion metric tonnes of food a year but up 2 billion tonnes is never eaten. … [The report] says retailers reject millions of tonnes of crops because of the physical appearance of fruit and vegetables, fearing shoppers will not buy them unless they look perfect.”

I am not sure how accurate these numbers are, but what is consistent across studies is that we are wasting a valuable resource that is not being replenished at a sustainable rate. It is also clear that this is a problem that is not going away, at least not in the short-term:

“Food consumption is becoming an important global issue. By the end of the century the world could have an extra 3 billion people to feed, according to the United Nations.”